


I Maybe Forgot To Mention

by Sali_Mali



Series: Nick and the demon spawn [1]
Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 02:49:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sali_Mali/pseuds/Sali_Mali
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick has a secret. He might have neglected to mention it to Harry. Thankfully The Sun mentioned it for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Maybe Forgot To Mention

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based on a dream I had. Yes, really. Just be glad I didn't write an epic self-insert based on that other dream where I got a job as the Breakfast Show's history correspondent. 
> 
> I hardly need to say that it's all completely made up, do I? No offence is meant to anyone mentioned in this story.

The news breaks sometime between Nick leaving home at dark o’clock in the morning and handing over to Tina for the news at 7am - making it too late to make the news bulletin (thank god) but not early enough for Nick to have called in sick and barricaded himself in his house.

As it is, he gets to watch Matt Fincham suffer some kind of on-air breakdown as the Breakfast Show descends into chaos around him, that or the thought of Nick as a father is just too much to cope with before he’s had his cereal. LMC has completely abandoned twitter after the first 5000 tweets and Ian and Fiona are stuck next door, helping Gemma cope with the phones now the switchboard has gone into meltdown.

He has no idea how he makes it to the end of the show, but somehow he does – even if Showquizness is a bit of a bust. They end up having to get Mike from Catering to pretend to be today’s caller – it’s either him or the showbiz editor of the Daily Mirror currently camped out on line one (he’d probably be good at it too, Nick might get him on once this has blown over). He wishes he could say it was just a slow news day, but he knows if this was happening to anyone but him, he’d be following the drama just as avidly as everyone else. Hell, he’d probably launch a feature. Male pregnancy is so rare it always makes the papers. Add in Nick’s celebrity (such as it is) and it’s front page news, along with the inevitable Who’s The Daddy? speculation.

As if on cue, Nick’s phone buzzes for the umpteenth time, the name HAROLD flashing accusingly from the screen. He ignores it and thanks whatever faceless PR exec is responsible for One Direction’s schedule that the lads are currently in America, doing promo for the new album. He wouldn’t have put it past Harry to come rushing round to Radio 1 in the heat of the moment and make a scene and Nick doesn’t think he could cope with that right now.

The buzzing stops and ’47 Missed Calls’ lights up. They’re not all from Harry, obviously, just... most of them, and a few of the answer phone messages, and most of the texts (except one from Aimee just saying ‘fuck fuck fuck’ because she was with him at the clinic and her face is splashed all over the front pages too).

He’s contemplating texting her back to point out that maybe if she didn’t have _orange hair_ , they would never have been spotted in the first place, when the door opens and Matt comes in with two cups of tea and a packet of chocolate hobnobs he almost certainly nicked from Huw’s secret stash. 

“You look awful,” Nick says, because he apparently has a death wish.

Matt gives him the sort of look you’d give a puppy you just found piddling on the carpet. “Well you’d know all about that,” he retorts, and it’s normal enough to be comforting, somehow. Death by Wheel of Four Tunes no longer seems quite so likely, anyway. 

They’re stuck in some back office overlooking the Radio 1 car park. No sooner had the show finished, then Matt had frog marched him there and left him with the firm instructions to stay put and shut up and under no circumstances google himself. The paps are swarming outside and they haven’t worked out how the hell to get him out of the building yet, or how they’re going to handle this. So much for the quiet afternoon Nick had planned with Aimee while they marathoned Cake Wars and tried to deal with the ridiculous soap opera his life had become.

He pulls a face. “I think you’re supposed to be nice to me now actually, Finchy.”

“I wasn’t nice to you before, why break the habit?” Matt sets the mugs down and pulls up a chair, dropping into it and leaning back with a loud sigh.

It’s quiet, but not so quiet they can’t hear the constant shrill ringing of phones and footsteps hurrying past. Damage control, Radio One style.

Nick runs a quick, nervous hand through his hair. “How bad is it?”

Matt tilts his head to look at him. “Real talk?”

“Oh god, that bad?”

Matt reaches for the biscuits. “Ben wants to see you as soon as you’re done here. We’ve got tabloids and all the major channels camped out at every exit and the switchboard has melted. Also you’re top trending on twitter worldwide and you’ve crashed tumblr. Congratulations.”

“At least we’re meeting the target demographic,” Nick says, in a weak approximation of a joke. He stops fiddling with his hair and starts fiddling with his mug instead. He just needs something to do with his hands and fuck knows he’s not allowed to smoke.

There’s silence for a moment then, and Nick can feel Matt staring at him. “What?” he says, defensive.

“Have you spoken to Harry?”

Nick jams a biscuit in his mouth so he doesn’t have to answer yet. His leg is jiggling under the desk and he thinks he read something once about how many calories are burned off by fidgeting. At this rate, his right thigh is going to be seriously buff. “Why would I speak to Harry?” he finally says, when he can’t pretend to chew his biscuit any longer. Matt just looks at him and Nick can feel himself bristle, something uncomfortably like guilt creeping over him. “If he wanted to chat, he’d phone and anyway, what makes you think this has anything to do with him?” It’s not like they’re together, except for how they kind of are, except admitting that freaks Nick out so they just never have. It’s fine. It works. It’s...whatever it is.

Instead of answering, Matt helps himself to Nick’s phone and scrolls, reading aloud. “21 missed calls from Harold, 7 answerphone messages, 15 texts. Last text ‘Nick answer your phone’, before that ‘I’m trying to call y---“

His litany is cut off when Nick yanks the phone out of his hand.

Matt raises his hands. “Sorry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all. Then, because he can’t leave things alone, he adds, “You need to talk to him, how do you think he’s feeling about all this?”

“Don’t care,” Nick mutters into his mug, “this is all his fault.”

Matt smirks. “I thought this had nothing to do with him?” 

Nick throws a biscuit at him for being smug No-one said he had to be mature about this after all, and it sort of _is_ Harry’s fault – with his stupid hair and big eyes, enticing Nick into undefined yet monogamous relationships where no-one uses protection. He should have known this would happen.

He face plants on the desk. “How the hell did this happen?”

Matt snorts. “When a DJ and a popstar love each other very much, there’s a special way they---”

This time Nick throws the whole packet at him, or at least he tries, it’s hard from his position and he mostly misses and just gets crumbs all over the carpet. “I got that bit, thanks.”

Somewhere near his right ear, his phone is buzzing again and he sits up in time to see HAROLD flash up briefly before it goes to answerphone. 

“You can’t keep ignoring him.”

Nick runs a hand through his hair again, he’s going to look bloody awful in the pap shots later. He supposes it’ll be good practice for the next 6 months of Heat articles pointing out his eye bags and weight issues. “Yeah I can, he’s not back for another eight days.”

The look Matt gives him is incredulous to say the least. “Yes, because he’s going to _finish up a promotional tour_ before he comes back to deal with this. He’s either at the airport, or he’s as good as.”

Nick freezes. “He wouldn’t do that, people would know.”

“Maybe he’s not thinking about that,” Matt says with a shrug.

Nick jiggles his leg up and down a bit, looks from Matt to the phone and back again, and then, with a muttered curse, he picks it up and hits speed dial before he can think better of it and hide from reality in the eighth floor loo (it wouldn’t be the first time).

Harry answers on the second ring.

“Nick?”

Nick takes a second to reply. Even over a phone and several thousand miles, Harry’s voice sounds shaky. It’s one thing to tell Matt he doesn’t care about how Harry feels, it’s another thing to hold onto that lie when he’s actually talking to him. “Yeah, hi, it’s me,” he manages. It comes out a bit more breezy than he’d intended, which is probably not appropriate, given the circumstances, but he’s not sure what the appropriate tone _is_ for calling up the teenage father of your secret love child, so breezy it is. “So listen—”

Harry completely overrides him. “Oh my god, I’ve been calling you for _hours_. It’s all over the news, it’s... Is it true? Is it...” Harry trails off, just breathing down the phone like he’s been running and suddenly Nick feels like an utter shit for not telling him earlier, for not telling him the moment he and Aimee got out of the clinic and leaving him to find out like _this_.

“Uh.... yeah, surprise,” he says weakly. There’s dead silence from Harry’s end this time and okay, Nick can handle that. “Are you at the airport?” 

“No,” Harry says after a moment. Nick just has time to feel relieved before he ruins it by adding distractedly, “I’m still waiting for the car to pick me up, flight’s not for another hour. Fuck, Nick, you’re _pregnant_.” He sounds completely shell-shocked, and Nick can’t really blame him, even if Sky News 24 have been running the story nearly non-stop since 7.30 - but that’s beside the point.

“You can’t come back,” he says urgently.

“What? Why?” Harry sounds confused.

Seriously, it’s a good thing Nick is the brains in this operation. “Because it would make it really bloody obvious, that’s why. You can’t come running back in the middle of your tour, Harold, the paps will have a field day.”

“Am I supposed to care about that?” Harry says, sounding a bit less shellshocked and more verging on pissed off.

“Well...don’t you?” Nick feels wrong-footed, which he hates.

“No! It’s not like they’re not going to find out anyway.”

Nick takes umbrage at that. “I can actually keep a secret when it matters, thanks.”

“Right,” Harry says flatly, “and you think we’re keeping this a secret, do you?”

This time Nick rolls his eyes, the effect is somewhat undermined by the fact Harry can’t see him. “Not the...” He can’t quite bring himself to say it yet so he skips over _that_ word, “Not that part, obviously, The Sun put paid to that, but they’re not going to guess it’s you so long as you don’t come haring back through Heathrow.” Harry doesn’t answer, so Nick barrels on, he’s good at talking to silence, he’s been on the radio long enough. “Okay, Sugarscape might post something, but no-one listens to them. They’ve already got a poll up, you know. Matt Fincham’s in there somewhere, and Frank Ocean and that bloke from Great British Bakeoff 2012, remember him? It’s a strong field.”

He twists around as he speaks to get Matt’s reaction, only to find Matt looking at him like he’d quite like to strangle him (except he can’t because delicate condition and also BBC health and safety). 

“What?” he mouths.

Matt shakes his head. “You’re such an idiot.”

Nick frowns, but before he can ask what that’s supposed to mean, Harry finally speaks. “We are not,” he says very definitely, “keeping this a secret.”

Nick tunes back into the conversation. “Okay,” he says, slowly, because Harry has somehow missed the _entire_ point, “But what about your---”

“Fuck it,” Harry interrupts him. “This is a baby, Nick, I’m not going to treat you like some dirty little secret. Fuck,” he breaks off, his voice wavering.

“Harry,” Nick says, placating, “I never thought that. I don’t mind, I get—”

“Well I mind,” Harry says, sharp like he never normally is. “I’ve always minded, you just never wanted to hear it.” Nick flounders, not expecting that at _all_ , but Harry’s not done. “We don’t have to... We don’t have to move in together or anything, just, this is a baby, our baby, not yours with some bloke off the Great British Bake-off for god’s sake.”

“Frank Ocean had better odds actually,” Nick says after a slightly shocked pause, because... Frank Ocean. Obviously he’s screen-capped the whole article. He’s probably going to have it framed and mounted on the living room wall.

“Shut up, Nick,” there’s a very wobbly sounding laugh down the phone and Harry sniffles a little, which does something to Nick’s insides that he’s never going to admit to anyone, “No-one’s going to believe it’s Frank Ocean’s baby anyway.”

“Hey! I could pull Frank Ocean,” Nick protests, because he _could_. It’s just a matter of getting him drunk enough.

Harry’s laugh sounds a bit more normal this time. “Yeah, because they’re not going to notice anything’s off when the baby’s actually born.”

Oh. Okay, maybe Nick had forgotten that in the thrill of seeing his name paired with Frank’s next to a manip of the two of them in front of a beautiful sunset (never let it be said Sugarscape doesn’t make an effort). “Spoilsport.”

Harry huffs and Nick’s willing to bet he’s doing the look, the why-the-fuck-am-I-with-you-I-could-be-dating-anyone look that Nick’s come to recognise from all the times he’s tried to cook anything more ambitious than a filo pie or that one time Finchy dared him to grow a beard. “Look, my car’s going to be here any minute and I have a flight to catch. Try not to do anything stupid, ok? I’ll see you at yours in like, 12 hours. We can talk more then.”

“You won’t,” Nick mutters, and if he’s sulking just a little, he can’t be blamed - since when did a 19 year old have more emotional maturity than him? This is ridiculous. “I’m hiding at Aimee’s”

“Fine,” Harry says shortly, “I’ll come there instead.”

There’s a pause where Nick just fiddles with his mug and rejects half a dozen variations on ‘I missed you’ or ‘I’m surprisingly glad you’re coming back actually’ because he’s never done well with feelings. He’s not a bleeding heart like Harry, flinging his feelings about all over the place and actually meaning all of them. Also Finchy is still in the room.

“Hey, don’t worry,” Harry says softly when the silence drags out just a little too long, his voice doing that deep, sincere thing that reminds Nick why he fell so stupidly stupidly in love with him in the first place. “I’m not going to hold a press conference at the airport or anything, I just...” he hesitates and Nick has a feeling he knows what’s coming, and the thing is he wants to hear it, he’s just not going to be the one to say it. Obviously. “I love you,” Harry says, quiet, then clears his throat, “Both of you, I guess, now there’s more of you to love.”

“No fat jokes, Styles” Nick mutters, so Matt won’t hear. Harry makes an exasperated noise, starts saying, “It wasn’t a—” before Nick takes pity on him and interrupts. “I know. I was joking. Sap.”

“Fuck off,” Harry says, and Nick thinks he’s probably smiling now. A phone rings, loud in the background, and Harry sighs. “That’s my cue. I’ll see you at Aimee’s, as soon as I can, I promise.”

“Okay,” and then, because there’s no point courting trouble until they absolutely have to, adds, “Just come in the back way.”

Harry sniggers, because despite occasional evidence to the contrary, he is _actually_ a teenager. “Don’t suppose it’ll do any harm now.”

“I hate you,” Nick says, “and I’m hanging up. Bring me back a Toblerone.”  
He disconnects the call and drops the phone on the desk, darting a glance at Matt. “Shut up.”

Matt smirks again. “I didn’t say anything.”

“My life has turned into an episode of Hollyoaks.”

“Mmm,” Matt agrees, tapping away on his phone, “Wasn’t there an episode where that teacher got pregnant by a teenage pupil and lost her job and everyone shunned her and she got arrested? Pretty sure she ended up dying in prison.”

“You’re not helping, Fincham.”

“Moyles is going to love this.”

“Ugh,” Nick flops back in the chair and scrubs a hand over his face. “At least nothing is going to worse than that.”

The door opens to admit Fiona, looking harassed and maybe a little like she’s dying to laugh – which is completely inappropriate given the dire circumstances of Nick’s life but just another cross he’ll have to bear. “Sorry to interrupt, but Fearne’s on line 3. Nothing urgent, I think she just wants to gloat.”

Matt grins.

Nick’s firing everybody.

The End.


End file.
